the house of grandfather Martin was to be included in Louise's marriage portion, and that Jean was to return to Jacques the available portion left him by their father to the prejudice of Jacques, the same bringing in an interest of five per cent. from the time Jean first came into possession thereof.

These stipulations increased my uneasiness again. "But, Monsieur Picot, he will never consent."

He laughed, and opening a drawer handed me another paper, in silence. I recognized Monsieur Jean's handwriting immediately. He accepted everything! My heart had not been so light for a long time.

"I understand Louise's sudden cure now," I exclaimed. "The battle is

won!"

"What has happened?" asked George, turning very white, when he had entered. "What's the matter?"

"You are going to be married to Louise," said Monsieur Picot, looking at him over his spectacles. "What do you say to that, sir? I hope we shall meet with no opposition from you now the two old folks have left Chaumes."

He handed the two letters, but George trembled, his knees shook beneath him, and if I, his old master, had not been near to support him he would have fallen back.

"Allons, allons, George!" I said. "Come, you are not going to give way

now?"

I

"Ah, Monsieur Florent, you don't know what I have gone through. feared Louise was gone for ever-and now

Louise?" he asked,

"Yes," said Monsieur Picot. "The two obstinate old men have fled, like de- "Confound it," said Monsieur Picot, serters, rather than witness their chil-"I broke the news too abruptly to him. dren's happiness. Had they stopped You were unprepared, nephew; but come here they would have had to be recon- and receive your old uncle's congratulaciled, to acknowledge they had been in tions all the same." The worthy man the wrong, had hated each other for opened his arms and held George to his thirty years and embittered our exist- bosom; then my turn came, after which ence, as well as that of poor Catherine, George sat down and read the two letters, the friends of their children, and of all but with so much emotion that he was the villagers. They would have had to speechless. make it up before everybody. Pride, that abominable vice, is at the bottom of it all. They are cruel savages. I would not tell any one but you, Monsieur Florent; but I repeat, they are barbarians! However, we'll manage to get on without them. You are to stand for George's father and I am to give Louise away. The wedding will be all the merrier for their absence. It would not have been particularly lively, after all, to see Attila at one end of the table and Gengis Khan at the other!"

"And Louise? at length.

"So you want to know about Louisewhether she consents too, eh?" said Monsieur Picot.

He walked across the room to a sidedoor, knocked, and asked, “Can we come in? Is it time to show ourselves now?" "Yes," replied a weak voice.

George pushed forward. We followed. He was at Louise's feet in one moment, for she was propped up by pillows in a large easy-chair, and dressed in the little Monsieur Picot shook with laughter. blue dress she had worn on the day of I could scarcely keep from dancing. the harvest-home. The poor child had Just then there was a little disturbance insisted upon having it put on, for it reout of doors, then a noise of hurried foot-minded her of her first days of happy steps. love, and Madame Charlotte Rantzau had humoured her.

That must be George!" said Monsieur Picot, rising.

It was. He had left for the woods early in the morning, where one of his father's servants had had some difficulty in finding him.

"Come, George, come this way!" cried Monsieur Picot from the window; we are waiting for you."

66

George stood, in his slouched beaver and gaiters, looking up in amazement.

Come in! Uncle Jean has gone; we are the masters of the house; come in."

She held George's curly head in her two small hands; her eyes were closed, but two big tears ran down her pale cheeks. I had never conceived an idea of such happiness in store for them; as to George, he sobbed like a child.

His mother, poor woman, stood behind Louise's chair with her hands over her face; this was her first day of happiness after many years of domestic slavery.

George rose at length and held his betrothed in a long embrace, I and Mon

sieur Picot standing gravely by, for the two lovers carried us back to the past and reminded us of those joys that shine Like stars behind the clouds of this life; trouble, grief, and weariness sail by, but we know the star shimmers behind, "It is there, it is there," says an inward voice in the worst and darkest moments-and there surely it gleams with undiminished brightness to the end. Such is love and its sweet memory.

And now need I relate the rest? the recovery of Louise, the pasting of fresh bills, the publication of the bans, and the wedding ceremony?

fact: the two old men came back to their homes a fortnight after the wedding!

They continued to behave, after all that had happened, exactly as they had done before. Each shut himself up in the back room of their respective houses; and thus they avoided overlooking each other.

They grew old in no time, and lost all their influence at Chaumes: everything went over to the young couple, who were to inherit their wealth; all business matters were transacted at the house on the Saar- the borrowing, hiring, letting, selling, purchasing, &c., &c. It was the everlasting old and new story of this world over again-life ebbing away from the aged to vitalize the young.

Madame Charlotte took up her quarters with her son, and thus enjoyed a few happy years, Monsieur Jacques not objecting in the least. He sought solitude, and resigned his official duties in order to live alone and undisturbed.

Need I describe father Florent, with a large nosegay in his button-hole, playing on the organ and singing anthems with extraordinary effusion and enthusiasm ? Need I describe the nuptial dinner-table, which was magnificently laid and surrounded by the joyful faces of guests all laughing and drinking to the merry sound of clinking glasses and the uncorking of bottles, while a band of wandering gipsies Towards the beginning of the followplayed in the next room? No. All ing autumn a sun-ray lit up the decline of these are familiar tales. Who has not the two old dethroned rulers - for I been to a wedding-if he has not had the good luck to be at his own, to woo and wed for himself?

I will not describe all these events, nor the happiness of George and Louise on this memorable occasion.

always compared' these Rantzaus to Clovis, Childeric, and Childebert in the history of our country, their principle of justice being: "Everything for ourselves and nothing for any one else." Sometimes these old monarchs would deal out a small share to St. Christopher or St. Magloire, who heard their confessions and absolved them of their sins, but that only happened when their stomachs were out of order, or when they were afraid of the flames of hell.

They determined not to live in uncle Jean's old house, but next day settled down in a lovely cottage at the farther end of the village, behind which a garden ran down to the borders of the Saar. This house was a little isolated, had green blinds in front and a balcony, so The dethroned old kings of Chaumes, they liked it besides, George said it therefore, were one day informed that an would be very unjust to turn his father-infant of the male sex was born unto them in-law out of the old home.

--

No sooner was he a happy man than he turned good, and called all the men back who had been too hastily dismissed from his father's service. He laid aside his slouched hat, old clothes, and cudgel, to dress according to his means and the taste of Louise.

I had a general invitation to their house every Thursday, and played selections from the "Zauberflöte," "Der Freyschütz," and the "Midsummer Night's Dream" on the Paris piano, which had been moved from Monsieur Jean's house. Louise and George used to sing, and I accompanied them, in the pride of my

in the house by the Saar. Their hearts leapt with joy, but neither left his palace for fear of meeting the other at the cottage.

Old Ména, the midwife, had to carry the heir of the good old race to each of them separately.

It became known that the features and expression of young Rantzau delighted them, for, from that day forward, both quarrelled over having it, in a new way. It was arranged that little Jean-Jacques, for that was the name, was not to stop longer at the house of one of his grandfathers than at the other's, and, as long as it did stop with one, the other impaheart. tiently stood looking out behind the curAll these details are very common-tains. In order to keep it a little longer place, I could almost leave them out; but they tried to outdo each other in gifts I will not omit a most extraordinary and in procuring the things it liked best,

From The Fortnightly Review. A LOST ART.

IT must have happened not unfre quently to those who have never had occasion or opportunity to make up their minds as to the expediency of granting Letters-patent for Inventions, to have attended in an attitude of simple inquiry a meeting held for the discussion of the principles involved in it. Any one who has thus attended in the hopes of obtaining clearer views of an obscure subject must have been not a little disconcerted, as the argument went on, to find how little agreement there was between the disputants as to first principles and elementary facts. One fact especially, as to which he has always supposed there must be a general consent among those conversant with the subject, undergoes, he is concerned to notice, a wonderful transformation on being presented to him from opposite sides. What, he is anx ious to know, would be the effect upon

inventors generally if Patent Laws were | Art. Huddled together in this mean, illabolished altogether? The thoroughgo- constructed store, are masterpieces of ing advocate of the privilege insists on inventive skill and glorious relics of inits being admitted as an axiom that but ventors now no more, of which the nafor some such shield provided for him by tion may well be proud. Here may be the State the inventor would work stealth-seen the famous original of Trevethick's ily and, whenever it was possible, carry locomotive (as old as 1803), "Puffing the secret of his discovery with him to Billy" (Hedley's locomotive), and Stethe grave. The opponent of patent rights, phenson's "Rocket" (that killed Huskon the other hand, ridicules the idea that isson); the "Parent Engine of Steam trade secrets can be kept at all, or that Navigation," as it is here affectionately an invention which has once proved itself labelled, that drove Patrick Miller, of useful in practice can possibly die out. Dals winton, along his lake at the rate of As regards the possibility of secret work- five miles an hour in 1788; and, placed as ing, he has ready a variety of anecdotes if to court comparison with this primeval and cases drawn from the sober reper- form, beautifully finished models of the entory of law reports, to prove that the gines of the "Great Eastern," the models ingenuity of the infringer has always actually larger than the veritable engine of been more than a match for the precau- Dalswinton; the screw propeller (Bennett tions of the inventor, and that moreover, Woodcroft's) used in the first experiwhen in his turn in the character of an ments made with that contrivance in an outraged patentee, the inventor is bent English ship of war; the reaping machine upon detecting the infringer at his work, of the Scotch parson, Patrick Bell (parent he does so in spite of all the subterfuges and archetype of all other reapers on and precautions a guilty conscience can either side of the Atlantic), which closed suggest. The attack where there is a a working career of forty years only to secret to be stormed is always, he will enjoy well-earned repose in Cinderella's tell you, stronger than the defense. That cave; Arkwright's original models of the following "true story" will have any carding and spinning machinery,-hisinfluence upon the views of the parties to torical models and engines, in short, in the debate it would be venturesome in- magnificent profusion. deed to say, the policy of Letters-patent for Inventions lying just within that portion of debatable land on which men, otherwise at one upon the dogmas of Political Economy, are found arrayed on opposite sides, and into the discussion of which something of theological acrimony has managed to find its way.

It was in endeavouring to add to these trophies a noble relic, Watt's "Sun and Planet" engine, the first device whereby the motion of a piston was imparted to a wheel, that one of the many zealous servants in Cinderella's household stumbled on the traces of the "Lost Art." The liberality of Mr. Boulton, a descendant of The story tells how, nearly a hundred Matthew Boulton, had placed the engine years ago, two men entirely, as far as one at the disposal of the Commissioners of can see, unconnected with each other, Patents, and this offer was shortly foldiscovered about the same time a very lowed by a not less liberal proposal from beautiful art, supposed to have been the representative of Watt, viz., to add Photography-possibly Photography in to the collection at South Kensington the colour; how, notwithstanding that a Pa- contents of Watt's workshop at Handstent Law was in full operation, they prac-worth, every article in which was then tised their art in secret, and how, with a strong suspicion in the case of one of them, that it was suppressed for purposes of State, the invention suddenly disappeared.

A few words will suffice to tell how "the photographs of the last century," as, without prejudice, we will call them for the nonce, were brought to light. At the gates of the sumptuous palace at South Kensington, in which Ornamental Art has been enthroned,-to the right as you enter, in a shed, or rather congeries of sheds, lie the treasures of her sisterthe Cinderella of the family, Industrial

standing as it stood when the great inventor died. The condition attached to the latter gift marks the limit of the public spirit that dictated it. The Commissioners were to provide suitable accommodation for its display — a simple stipulation with the terms of which they have never yet been in a condition to comply.

On the morning of Tuesday, the 17th of December, 1861, Sir Francis Pettit Smith, then Mr. Smith, an honoured fellow labourer of Mr. Bennett Woodcroft's in the work of introducing the screw propeller into ships, left London for Birmingham,